Stone Fruit

March 28.

I have not decided whether I had better publish my experience in searching for arrowheads in three volumes, with plates and an index, or try to compress it into one.

Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space.

The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men. They are sown, like a grain that is slow to germinate, broadcast over the earth.

They bear crops of philosophers and poets. 

• The same seed is just as good to plant again. 
• They cannot be said to be lost nor found. 
• They occur only to the eye and thought that chances to be directed toward them.

A stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought.

So I help myself to live worthily, and loving my life as I should, I go in search of arrowheads when the proper season comes round again.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1859 [For full entry see March 28, 1859 ("Some time or other, you would say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all over the surface of America. ")]

Loving my life as I should. See July 16, 1851 ("May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly discovered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. ...[May] I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world."); August 15, 1851 ("May I love and revere myself above all the gods that men have ever invented. May I never let the vestal fire go out in my recesses.")